attendre

To wait, one of the most frequently used verbs in French, with an important idiomatic extension: attendre un enfant means to be expecting a baby, not literally 'waiting for a child' in a passive sense. Also common in the reassuring phrase 'attends voir' (hang on, let's see).

• J'attends le bus depuis vingt minutes. — I've been waiting for the bus for twenty minutes.
• Elle attend son deuxième enfant. — She's expecting her second child.
• Attends-moi, j'arrive tout de suite ! — Wait for me, I'm coming right away!

Attendre already means 'to wait for' — French doesn't need a preposition after it the way English does (j'attends le bus, not *j'attends pour le bus), a very common interference error from English.

• book En attendant Godot — Samuel Beckett's 1952 absurdist play, written originally in French and later adapted by Beckett himself into English as 'Waiting for Godot' — one of the most influential works of 20th-century theatre.